Title: The Diver
Author: A. J. Alan
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0609251h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: December 2006
Date most recently updated: December 2006
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THE DIVER

by

A.J. Alan

For some reason or other the B.B.C. are always asking me to
tell a ghost story—at least, they don't ask me, they tell
me I've got to. I say, "What kind of a ghost story?" and they
say, "Any kind you like, so long as it's a personal experience
and perfectly true."

Just like that; and it's cramped my style a bit. Not that my
personal experiences aren't true. Please don't think that. But
it's simply this: that when it comes to supernatural matters my
luck hasn't been very good. It isn't that I don't believe in such
things on principle, but I do like to be present when the
manifestations actually occur, instead of just taking other
people's word for them; and, somehow or other, as I've said
before, my luck has not been very good.

Lots of people have tried to convert me. There was one young
woman in particular. She took a lot of trouble about
it—quite a lot. She used to dra—take me to all sorts
of parties where they had séances—you know the kind:
table-turning, planchette, and so on—but it wasn't any
good. Nothing ever happened when I was there. Nothing spiritual,
that is. People always said:

"Ah, my boy, you ought to have been here last night. The table
fairly got up and hit us in the face."

Possibly very wonderful—but, after all, the ground will
do that if you let it.

Well, as I say, they took me to several of these parties, and
we used to sit for hours round tables, in a dim light, holding
hands. That was rather fun sometimes—it depended on who one
sat next to—but apart from that, the nights they took me no
manifestations ever occurred. Planchette wouldn't spell a word,
and the table might have been screwed to the floor. To begin with
they used to put it down to chance, or the conditions not being
favourable. But after a time they began to put it down to
me—and I thought: "Something will have to be done about
it." It's never amusing to be looked upon as a sort of Jonah.

So I invented a patent table-tapper. It was made on the same
principle as lazy tongs. You held it between your knees, and when
you squeezed it a little mallet shot up (it was really a cotton
reel stuck on the end of a pencil) and it hit the underneath of
the table a proper biff. It was worked entirely with the knees,
so that I could still hold the hands of the people on either side
of me. And it was a success from the word "Go."

At the very next séance, as soon as the lights were
down, I gave just a gentle tap. Our host said:

"Ah, a powerful force is present!" and I gave a
louder—ponk! Then he said:

"How do you say 'Yes'?"—and I said:

"Ponk!" Then he said:

"How do you say 'No'?" And I said:

"Ponk, ponk!"

So far so good. Communication established. Then people began
asking questions and I spelt out the answers. Awful hard work
ponking right through the alphabet, but quite worth it. I'm
afraid some of my answers made people sit up a bit. They got
quite nervous as to what was coming next. Needless to say, this
was some years ago.

Then some one said:

"Who's going to win the Derby?" (I don't know who said
that) and I laboriously spelt out Signorinetta. This was two days
before the race. I don't know why I said Signorinetta,
because there were several horses with shorter names, but it just
came into my head. The annoying thing was that I didn't take my
own tip and back it. You may remember it won at 100 to 1 by I
don't know how many lengths—five lengths dividing second
and third. However, it's no use crying over the stable door after
the horse has spilt the milk, and it has nothing whatever to do
with the story.

The amusing thing was that when the séance was over
various people came round to me and said:

"Now will you believe in spiritualism?" "What more
proof do you want?" and so on and so forth. It struck me as
rather rich that they should try to convert me with my own false
evidence. And I don't mind betting you that if I'd owned up to
the whole thing being a spoof, not a soul would have believed me.
That's always the way.

I've told you all this to show that I'm not exactly dippy on
the subject of spiritualism—at any rate, not the
table-turning variety—very largely because it is so
easy to fake your results.

But when something genuinely uncanny comes
along—why, then I'm one of the very first to be duly
thrilled and mystified and—what not. It's one of those
genuine cases I want to tell you about. It happened to me
personally. But first of all you must know that there's a
swimming-bath at my club. Very good swimming-bath, too. Deep at
one end and shallow at the other. There's a sort of hall-place
adjoining it, and in this hall there's a sandwich bar—very
popular. It's much cheaper than lunching upstairs. Quite a lot of
people seem to gravitate down there—especially towards the
end of the month. Everything's quite informal. You just go to the
counter and snatch what you want and take it to a table and eat
it. Then when you've done, you go and tell George what you've
had. George runs the show, and he says "one-and-ninepence," or
whatever it is, and that's that.

Personally, I usually go to a table in a little recess close
to the edge of the swimming-bath itself. You have to go down a
few steps to get to it. But you are rather out of the turmoil and
not so likely to get anything spilt over you. It's quite
dangerous sometimes, people darting in and out like a lot of
sharks—which reminds me: a member once wrote in to the
secretary complaining that the place wasn't safe—I shan't
say who it was, but you'd know his name if I told you; I managed
to get hold of a copy of his letter. This is what he says,
speaking of the sandwich bar:

"I once saw an enormous shark, at least five feet ten inches
long, go up to the counter and seize a sausage roll—itself
nearly four inches long—and take it away to devour it. When
he had bitten off the end, which he did with a single snap of his
powerful jaws, he found that it was empty. The sausage, which
ought to have been inside, had completely vanished. It had been
stolen by another shark even more voracious and ferocious than
himself.

"Never shall I forget the awful spectacle of the baffled and
impotent rage of this fearful monster. He went back to the
counter, taking the empty sarcophagus with him, and said:
'George, I have been stung!'

"In order to avoid such scenes of unparalleled and revolting
cruelty"—after that he is rather inclined to exaggerate, so
I shan't read any more—I usually go late, when the rush is
over and it's fairly quiet. People come and practise diving, and
sometimes they are worth watching—and sometimes not.

That's the sort of place it is, and if you know of anywhere
less likely to be haunted I should like to see it. Very well,
then.

One day I was just finishing lunch when there was a splash. I
was reading a letter and didn't look up at once, but when I did I
was rather surprised to see no ripples on the water, and no one
swimming about, so I went on with my letter and didn't think any
more about it. That was all that happened that day.

Two or three weeks later, at about the same time, I was again
finishing lunch, and there was another splash. This time I looked
up almost at once and saw the ripples, and it struck me
then that it must have been an extraordinarily clean dive,
considering that whoever it was must have gone in off the top.
One could tell that from where the ripples were—well out in
the middle. So I waited for him to come up. But he didn't come
up. Then I thought that he must be doing a length under water,
and I got up and went to the edge of the bath to watch for him.
But still he didn't come up and I got a bit worried. He might
have bumped his head on the bottom, or fainted, or anything, and
I saw myself having to go in after him with all my clothes
on.

I sprinted right round the bath, but there was undoubtedly no
one in it. The attendant came out of one of the dressing-rooms
and evidently thought I'd gone cracked, so I went to the
weighing-machine and weighed myself—eleven stone
eight—but I don't think he believed me.

That was the second incident. The third came about a fortnight
later. This time I saw the whole thing quite clearly. I was
sitting at my usual table and I saw a man climbing up the ladder
leading to the top diving-board. When he got up there he came
out/to the extreme end of the plank and stood for a few seconds
rubbing his chest and so on—like people often do.

He was rather tall and muscular—dark, with a small
moustache—but what particularly caught my eye was a great
big scar he had. It was about nine inches long and it reached
down from his left shoulder towards the middle of his chest. It
looked like a bad gash with a bayonet. It must have hurt quite a
lot when it was done.

I don't know why I took so much notice of him, but I just did,
that's all. And, funnily enough, he seemed to be just as much
interested in me as I was in him. He gave me a most meaning look.
I didn't know what it meant, but it was undoubtedly a meaning
look.

As soon as he saw that he'd got me watching him he dived in,
and it was the most gorgeous dive I've ever seen. Hardly any
noise or splash—just a gentle sort of plop as though he'd
gone into oil rather than water—and the ripples died away
almost at once. I thought, if only he'll do that a few more times
it'll teach me a lot, and I waited for him to come up—and
waited—and waited—but not a sign.

I went to the edge of the bath, and then I walked right round
it. But, bar the water, it was perfectly empty. However, to make
absolutely certain—I mean that he couldn't have got out
without my seeing him—I dug out the attendant and satisfied
myself that no towels and—er—costumes had been given
out since twelve o'clock—it was then half-past
two—and he, the attendant, he'd actually seen the last man
leave.

The thing was getting quite serious. My scarred friend
couldn't have melted away in the water, nor could he have dived
slap through the bottom of the bath—at least, not without
leaving some sort of a mark. So it was obvious that either the
man had been a ghost, which was absurd—who's ever heard of
a ghost in a swimming-bath?—I mean the ideas's too
utterly—er—wet for anything—or that there was
something wrong with the light lager I was having for lunch.

I went back to my table and found I'd hardly begun it, and in
any case let me tell you it was such light lager that a
gallon of it wouldn't have hurt a child of
six—and—I'm not a child of six. So I ruled
that out, and decided to wait and see if it happened again. It
wouldn't have done to say anything about it. One's friends are
apt to be a bit flippant when you tell 'em things like that.
However, I made a point of sitting at the same table for weeks
and weeks afterwards, but old stick-in-the-mud didn't show up
again.

A good long time after this—it must have been eighteen
months or more—I got an invitation to dine with some people
called Pringle. They were old friends of mine, but I hadn't seen
them for a long time because they'd mostly lived in Mexico, and
one rather loses touch with people at that distance. Anyway, they
were going back there in a few days, and this was a sort of
farewell dinner.

They'd given up their flat and were staying at an hotel.
They'd got another man dining with them. His name was Melhuish,
and he was, with one exception, the most offensive blighter I've
ever come across. Do you know those people who open their mouths
to contradict what you are going to say before you've even begun
to say it? Well, he did that, among other things. It was rather
difficult to be entirely civil to him. He was travelling back to
Mexico with the Pringles, as he'd got the job of manager to one
of their properties. Something to do with oil, but I didn't quite
grasp what, my mind was so taken up with trying to remember where
on earth I'd seen the man before.

Of course you all know. You know he was the man who
dived into the swimming-bath. It sticks out about a mile,
naturally; but I'd only seen him once before in a bad light, and
it took me till half-way through the fish to place him. Then it
came back with a rush, and my interest in him became very lively.
He was an American, and he'd come over to England two months
before, looking for a job—so he said. I asked him why he'd
left America, and he didn't hear; but it did seem fairly certain
that he'd never been in Europe before. So when we got to dessert
I proceeded to drop my brick.

I said: "Do you mind telling me whether you have a scar on
your chest like this?" And I described it. The Pringles just
stared, but Melhuish looked as if he were going to have a fit.
Then he pulled himself together and said: "Have you ever been in
America?" And I said: "No, not that I know of." Then he said:
"Well, it's a most extraordinary thing, but I have a scar
on my chest," and he went on to explain how he'd got it.

Funnily enough, he'd gone in for high diving a lot when he was
younger, and taken any amount of prizes, and on one occasion he'd
found a sharp stake at the bottom of a river. He gave us full
particulars. Very messy. But what they all wanted to know was how
the—how I knew anything about it. Of course, it was a great
temptation to tell 'em, but they'd only have thought I'd gone off
my rocker, so I started a hare about perhaps having seen a
photograph of his swimming-club in some newspaper or other. They
caught on to that idea quite well, so I left them to it.

The whole thing was by way of being rather a problem, and it
kept me awake that night. Without being up in such matters, it
did occur to me that it might be a warning of some kind. Is it
likely that any one—even a ghost—would take the
trouble to come all the way from America simply to show me how
well he could dive? Of course not, and I sort of thought that a
man who was in the habit of going in off the deep end and
not coming up again was no fit travelling companion for
any friends of mine. I'm not superstitious, goodness knows! Of
course, I don't walk under ladders, or light three matches with
one cigarette, or any of those things, but that's because they're
unlucky—not because I'm superstitious.

Anyhow, in case the Pringles might be, I went round next day
and saw them. At least, I saw her—he was out—and told
her all about the apparition at the club, and so on. That did it.
She fairly went off pop. It was a portent, a direct intervention
of Providence; nothing would induce her to travel with Melhuish
after what she'd heard—and all the rest of it.

I left her to carry on the good work. I don't know how she
managed it, but the fact remains that the Pringles did not
start for Mexico, as arranged, and Melhuish did.

And now you are expecting me to say that the ship in which he
sailed was never heard of again. But that wouldn't be strictly
true. He got to the other side all right. But the train in which
he was travelling through Mexico had to cross a bridge over a
river. A steel bridge, it was. Now some months previously there'd
been a slight scrap between two local bands of brigands, in the
course of which the bridge had been blown up.

When the quarrel was patched up the bridge was patched up,
too, but not with the meticulous care it might have been. The
result was that in the daytime, when the sun was hot and the
steelwork fully expanded, it was a perfectly good bridge, but at
night, when it was cold and the girders had shrunk a
bit—well, it didn't always quite meet in the middle.

It so happened that the train in question tried to cross this
wretched bridge at the very moment when it was having rather a
job to make both ends meet—and it simply couldn't bear it.
The middle span carried away and the engine and two carriages
crashed through into the river, and fourteen people were killed.
It was very sad about thirteen of them, but the fourteenth was
Mr. Melhuish.

There must be a moral to this story, if I could only think of
it; but I can't, so perhaps some of you can help me by suggesting
one....